Gregg Popovich and New York: A love affair that triumphs ugly losses to the Knicks and Nets

By Chris Sheridan

Feb 26, 2019 | 11:10 AM

A bearded, gray-haired man was walking through the streets of SoHo on Sunday, meandering this way and that way in his favorite NBA city not named San Antonio.

He randomly walked into a restaurant for a plate of oysters and a glass of wine, then eventually made his way to Madison Square Garden where his team played arguably its worst game of the season in losing to the New York Knicks as Jim Dolan’s team snapped its 18-game home losing streak.

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Monday wasn’t quite as good as Saturday night (dinner at Sistina on the Upper East Side near the Metropolitan Museum of Art) or Sunday afternoon, what with the wind whipping especially strong in lower Manhattan where the San Antonio Spurs were staying.

The only thing that would have made it better was an off day Monday and a game Tuesday at Atlantic Yards.

“I would like it better if there was time between it, so I could go to dinner. You lose a dinner. That’s the truth,” said Popovich, a world-class wine connoisseur and a closet foodie.

Gregg Popovich loves the city. (Getty Images/NYDN composite)

"I’m always looking for the old-school stuff.”

Gregg Popovich

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There is no NBA coach more worldly than Popovich, who revels in the international nature of New York City and the street life interactions that go along with walking down streets that follow the same paths as they did 200 years ago.

And when it comes to having his team – filled with so many new players following the conclusion of the Duncan-Parker-Ginobili era – get a real taste of Manhattan, he sometimes goes unconventional routes.

Prior to the Knicks game, for example, the team bus pulled into the loading dock off of West 33rd Street, went through security and were told to walk up the ramp to the arena level.

No dice.

“The gentleman said ‘right up this way – up the ramp.’ And I said ‘No, we’re going through here, through the garbage.”

What Pop was referring to is the old service elevator inside the Garden, the one capable of transporting elephants when the circus comes to down. In order to get to the service elevator, you have to navigate through the dumpsters where garbage is stored.

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“So we took the elevator up,” Popovich said. “I like the smell. It makes me feel like it’s real basketball instead of everything pristine. So I’m always looking for the old-school stuff.”

There aren’t many like Popovich left around the NBA, where the overthinkers have replaced the grit and guts characters who populated the league in decades past. And when Pop comes to New York, the grumpy guy who is so often seen on TV goes into hibernation.

“New York Pop” likes to talk, and he held court on a number of issues over the past couple of days.

An example: His reflections on Malcolm X, who was assassinated in February of 1965 at age 39.

“Probably more than anything, honesty that nobody wanted to hear long before anybody heard anything. He was saying things that nobody else would say that were all very true,” Popovich said. “But because it didn’t want to be heard, it was labeled as almost revolutionary in a negative, criminal sense. And it does make sense, because it was other than, less than.

“But he spoke the truth in many, many ways. “

Popovich will coach Team USA at the World Championship in China this summer and at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, but qualification duties were handed to Jeff Van Gundy, the former Knicks coach who now spends most of his time working at a broadcaster for ESPN and ABC.

Jeff Van Gundy. (Arnulfo Franco / AP)

Not one single player has made a 100 percent commitment to represent Team USA in China, most preferring to wait for the glamour and glory of the Olympics in Tokyo.

But Popovich will eventually get a squad of 12 NBA players … he just won’t lobby them to come during the regular season.

“I hate half of them,” Popovich said, perhaps jokingly. “That would be inappropriate … for me before games to go up to one or two guys on each team and say ‘Hey, you going to play for us this summer? I’d really like to have you.’ He’s there to try to whip our ass, and he’s got a different priority that night.”

So the makeup of Team USA will remain a mystery until July … sort of like the mystery surrounding what the Knicks will look like after the draft and after they decide what to do with their $75 million in salary cap space.

In Brooklyn, Popovich was coaching against Nets’ GM Sean Marks’s squad. Marks played for him with the Spurs and studied under him as a member of the San Antonio front office.

“He didn’t play a lick of D. The slowest feet I’ve ever seen in my life. Truly. That sticks out to this day.”

But did he show any signs he’d take to coaching and front office duties?

“You could always see those guys, whether it’s someone like him or an Avery Johnson or a Steve Kerr, that sort of thing. The questions he asked were always incisive. He knew how it all had to fit together for a group that wanted to play for each other and be happy for each other’s success. You saw that from him all the time. Sometimes he couldn’t execute it with the athleticism necessary, but it’s often times people like that who are limited but learn how to get things done with their brain, and that’s how he got by.”

Many New Yorkers would love to see Van Gundy return to coach the Knicks, but Fizdale has been given free rein to find the keepers amid his cast of castoffs. And the bridges between Van Gundy and the Knicks were burned long, long ago.

“He’s better than most of us as a coach, and most of us know that,” Popovich said. “But that’s not always what gets you hired. Circumstances and things like that, personal situations, and timing has to be right.

“But he’s certainly somebody who would make a franchise better, without a doubt.”

Monday night’s game wrapped up San Antonio’s annual rodeo road trip, and they will finally play a home game Wednesday – their first since Feb. 2.

The road trip was a catastrophe by Spurs standards, but at least for Popovich it ended with three days in the city he loves as much as any native New Yorker.